JWG

Last weekend: Gender Free Dance Camp

May 7th, 2010

Last weekend was one of our (Lavender Country & Folk Dancers) twice a year dance camps. It was a blast. Our Contra Dance caller was David Millstone who among other things is a dance historian/cinematographer. He gave an illustrated lecture with some cool stuff which included square dancing by the Marx Bros in Duck Soup, an I Love Lucy show with square dancing, and a Lucky Strike commercial with square dancing cigarettes. David has made some pretty need videos about dance communities and key individuals. (I already had some of the DVDs, but bought a couple of new ones).

The band was Tidal Wave, a Quebecois band (piano, fiddle, bass and banjo, accordion and feet); they were quite lively and most excellent. We also had English Country Dancing and Latin dancing - the latter taught by a high-personality teacher, Mariele Celiman, who was lots of fun to watch (I didn't do that because I don't like dancing where it matters where your left and right feet are). Mariele's day job is selling shoes at Teddy's Shoes in Central Square, Cambridge. Other than that I danced just about every dance. I was pretty exhausted on Sunday night and Monday and skipped the gym until Tuesday.

The weather was great. I went to Archery on Sat afternoon (this takes place at a YMCA camp) and in a competition I won all the arrows from one of my neighbors and several from others. Some people went boating and swimming also. Their docks were messed up because this winter some beavers created some dams which raised the level of the water. I did see a beaver swimming in the lake.

I was sound person for this camp which mostly required work at setup time, but one of the band members is a sound person and he did lots of tweaking himself which was fine with me. I'm also treasurer so I had a bit of extra work to do - attendance was low and we lost a few hundred dollars which was less than I expected, but not a big deal since we have a reasonable surplus.

What with bringing the sound equipment, some decorations, and other materials in addition to my own clothes including skirts, lots of socks and t-shirts, and a red sequined "tails" for the Saturday night party, I forgot to bring my camera so there are none as part of this posting (yeah, i could have used my phone).